Texas Mounted Rifles

The Texas Mounted Rifles was a company of mounted troops from Texas that served in the Confederate State Army during the American Civil War. Captain Thomas Magruder served in the rifles during the war, and he gained permission to lead an expedition to New Mexico in 1864 to search for Quivira, the fabled city of gold. The rifles found the only white man who knew the location of the city, Dr. Campbell, who lived among the Apache tribe. Magruder had the villagers massacred when one of his men, Clay Allison, located the Cross of Coronado in a hut; Magruder was shot in the eye and wounded, while a few of his men were also killed when the Apache warriors fought back. Both Allison and fellow veteran Ned White would fight against Magruder in the years after the war, as Magruder never gave up his search for Quivira.